When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

Clippings from news sources involving fashion freedom and other gender equality issues.
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When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

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Re: When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

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I can understand that. Men's clothes have been very boring and thus I took little interest for the most of my life.
Not that we are falling in love with fashion ........... perhaps with being unfashionable .......... or just our freedom of choice.
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Re: When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

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That was actually a nicely-done article. For once, an article that isn't over-the-top trans-* heavy.
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Re: When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

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The problem as I see it is that the clothes being shown are at the extreme end of high fashion and, as such, they are really only accessible to a wealthy subset of young people who have somewhat Bohemian lifestyles. One look at the offerings of Chopova Lowena seems to confirm this. She isn't selling wearable clothes you could wear to work or a trip to the library: she is selling bizarre costumes. Jean Paul Gaultier was doing the same thing several decades ago and they didn't really impact on the average Joe.

On the positive side, Christian Allair's outfit at the top of the page is reasonably wearable and he even maintains a bit (!) of masculinity in the look. Also, his story confirms the more relaxed attitude some parents now have about their boys being able to play with traditionally feminine toys - and even donning a dress or skirt now and again. This is significant. I reckon most of us on here would have been absolutely horrified and angry if, as young boys, our parents had expected us to wear even the simplest cotton dress. Maybe that taboo is showing an early sign of weakening.
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Re: When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

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Stu wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 2:01 pmI reckon most of us on here would have been absolutely horrified and angry if, as young boys, our parents had expected us to wear even the simplest cotton dress. Maybe that taboo is showing an early sign of weakening.
For me I would have both welcomed it and been horrified that people would treat me differently or think I was a freak… basically I wouldn’t be meeting “society’s expectations” of a male and that was the issue. Maybe I’m not understanding the comment, but for me at least, skirts have been an interest at a very early age.
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Re: When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

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Stu wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 2:01 pm I reckon most of us on here would have been absolutely horrified and angry if, as young boys, our parents had expected us to wear even the simplest cotton dress. Maybe that taboo is showing an early sign of weakening.
Agreed Stu and Coder, yet enforced feminisation or petticoat discipline would appear to be a fairly common male fantasy.
The reality for a child is a wholly different matter.
In my own case, I can say it never happened to me as a child but if I could have had a consequence free opportunity to wear a skirt or dress, I think that I'd have taken it.
However, the very thought of my secret becoming in any sense public knowledge led to me keeping it for too long for my own good.
Rather than weakening the taboo, I'd just like to see the day when it is utterly broken.
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Re: When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

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Coder wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 4:27 pm For me I would have both welcomed it and been horrified that people would treat me differently or think I was a freak… basically I wouldn’t be meeting “society’s expectations” of a male and that was the issue. Maybe I’m not understanding the comment, but for me at least, skirts have been an interest at a very early age.
I suspect it is unusual for a boy to have an interest in skirts at any time. I certainly didn't, so I am coming at this topic from a very different angle than you. I still wouldn't say I have an interest in them - I just think we should have the option to choose something that is not some form of trousers.

My comment related to the rock solid taboo that exists in modern western culture and whether it is gradually breaking down. Mostly, it isn't in my experience. High fashion (as we see when we read Vogue) is a poor indicator as it relates to a minuscule proportion of the male population. The striking exception we might be seeing relates to boys rather than grown men as we are seeing a few challenging the taboo for a host of reasons - or perhaps they are just excuses, like not being allowed to wear shorts at school, or to show solidarity with girls regarding sexual harassment etc. For children and adolescents, it is far easier to challenge taboos and, having done that, to adapt to a new normal. I remember an amusingly-written article in the Sunday Times Magazine decades ago, late 1970s?, in which a writer - I can't remember who he was - was discussing his recent wedding, but he started by relating something that happened when he was just seven. His father, who sold and installed professional bakery equipment, had travelled to Salisbury, Rhodesia (as was) and, while there, he suffered a stroke. His mother hurriedly arranged a flight to Salisbury and dumped him with a relative in another town. The relative had two teenage daughters and, to cut a long story short, he had arrived with little more the clothes he stood up in and ended up spending several weeks in the summer and ended up wearing this relative's daughters' cast-offs, including dresses, shoes and everything else. He says he wasn't too happy at first, but he became more open to this and soon it became normal and he thought no more about it. He was in an area in which nobody else knew him and he just stopped caring, as did the two daughters. Once his parents returned, he said it never occurred to him again to don any feminine garment and it wasn't mentioned. So the point here is that the process is initial shock followed by normalisation and the shock period tends to be vanishingly short when it comes to kids.

BTW - The story ended with the Best Man's speech at his wedding and that involved said best man humiliating him by producing a blown-up photo of the writer, aged seven, posing while wearing a 1950s twirly dress at a fun fair. In my case, I would have rather be seen dead than wearing anything that was considered to be a feminine garment, so maybe he was just a bit more secure than I was.
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Re: When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

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STEVIE wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 6:26 pmRather than weakening the taboo, I'd just like to see the day when it is utterly broken.
The taboo is unnecessarily restrictive, discriminatory, totally pointless and just plain stupid.

Sorry, Steve, but that's what I think.
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Re: When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

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STEVIE wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 6:26 pm
Stu wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 2:01 pm I reckon most of us on here would have been absolutely horrified and angry if, as young boys, our parents had expected us to wear even the simplest cotton dress. Maybe that taboo is showing an early sign of weakening.
Agreed Stu and Coder, yet enforced feminisation or petticoat discipline would appear to be a fairly common male fantasy.
The reality for a child is a wholly different matter.
Yuck - that's not exactly how I understood Stu's comment, nor what I meant (not upset with you - just want to clarify). We are all forced to wear something we don't like when we are kids - suit, tie, good clothes, etc... unless really lucky or we have a sense of style aligned with our elders. I resented some of the clothing choices that were forced upon me - but I put up with them because that's what you do when you are a kid - obey your parents. My fashion sense at a young age was not in line with my contemporaries, and I kinda wanted to wear what I wanted. That's not to say I hated pants or resented the tennis shoes I picked out, but if given the opportunity to mix and match I'd have been a happy child.
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Re: When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

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Coder wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 9:35 pmI resented some of the clothing choices that were forced upon me - but I put up with them because that's what you do when you are a kid - obey your parents.
I was largely the same way, but I deeply deeply resented the range of options the gals had over the guys. Like all "good children" I shoved those resentments down and bravely acted the part -- and that had a price to it, and it persisted until well into adulthood.

That "price" was the fact that I hated the male straitjacket so fiercely that I simply gave up on my appearance -- and it drove girlfriends insane because I just could not bring myself to give a damn. I'm not sure precisely what did it, but something kicked that resentment hard shortly after I turned 40 -- hard enough that to use the turntable analogy, I "jumped the groove". And what an awakening! My then partner was initially somewhat confused, but by her own recollection she, "wasted about 15 seconds wondering what it meant and realised that she wasn't going to get that time back". Resentment shoved aside, all of a sudden I started actually taking an interest in how I looked and how I presented to the world, and aside from losing her in 2015 it's been good since. My confidence is better, my posture is better (which is good because I have a bad back), my demeanour, and my overall outlook is brighter. All over the silly question of "one pipe or two?".

Thirty years mostly lost to resentment and jealousy -- and over what? It's silly on the face of it, but the vast majority of guys never even likely contemplate the matter. If they did, I suspect the world would become a better place.
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Re: When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

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crfriend wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 10:58 pm
Coder wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 9:35 pmI resented some of the clothing choices that were forced upon me - but I put up with them because that's what you do when you are a kid - obey your parents.
I was largely the same way, but I deeply deeply resented the range of options the gals had over the guys. Like all "good children" I shoved those resentments down and bravely acted the part -- and that had a price to it, and it persisted until well into adulthood.
Man... That sounds familiar! I'd call it envy rather than resentment most of the time, but resentment crept in at times, too.

My parents gave me some say in what I wore, but some stuff wasn't even worth asking. I couldn't have dreamed of coming right out and asking for a skirt...
crfriend wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 10:58 pm That "price" was the fact that I hated the male straitjacket so fiercely that I simply gave up on my appearance -- and it drove girlfriends insane because I just could not bring myself to give a damn. I'm not sure precisely what did it, but something kicked that resentment hard shortly after I turned 40 -- hard enough that to use the turntable analogy, I "jumped the groove". And what an awakening! My then partner was initially somewhat confused, but by her own recollection she, "wasted about 15 seconds wondering what it meant and realised that she wasn't going to get that time back". Resentment shoved aside, all of a sudden I started actually taking an interest in how I looked and how I presented to the world, and aside from losing her in 2015 it's been good since. My confidence is better, my posture is better (which is good because I have a bad back), my demeanour, and my overall outlook is brighter. All over the silly question of "one pipe or two?".

Thirty years mostly lost to resentment and jealousy -- and over what? It's silly on the face of it, but the vast majority of guys never even likely contemplate the matter. If they did, I suspect the world would become a better place.
For me it's been a long, slow shift, rather than simply making a jump. One I'm still making. I started that shift in college, and I'm still working on it over a decade later. But here I am, slowly doing it, and I've got a ways to go before I hit that 40 mark...

I even before I mustered the courage to get myself a skirt, I was paying what I assume was far more attention to women's clothing than the average guy. Sure, girls were pretty. But the clothes! I wanted to pick apart what makes it work, what the rules are, what rules are different for men and women, and so on, so I could figure a way to make something similar work for me.

As I finished high school I needed to take a test for colorblindness. My own mother quipped that some of the (entirely male) outfits I had put together were proof enough that I could see color just fine. Now, all these years later, my wife actually genuinely trusts and appreciates my input on outfits she is putting together for herself.
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Re: When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

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I also took no interest in "menswear", in fact I was so disillusioned that I took heart in seeing Communist propaganda posters with men and women in the exactly the same overalls looking so cheerful. For a few years I mainly wore overalls, and some quite colourful, including red, bright green and bright blue ones. I was designing and building brick making machinery at the time so it was fortuitously appropriate.
When I tried on a miniskirt and loved it, there initially was resentment as my thought was "I wish men could wear this sort of thing". Luckily, and thanks a lot to Skirt Cafe, I realise that men can wear skirts .......... and now I do most of the time in most situations.
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Re: When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

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denimini wrote: Tue Aug 17, 2021 11:31 am I also took no interest in "menswear", in fact I was so disillusioned that I took heart in seeing Communist propaganda posters with men and women in the exactly the same overalls looking so cheerful
An interesting notion.

But you're right of course, what we find in the extreme "communist" regimes around the world are situations where how people express themselves is tightly controlled by the communist state.

I do realize that communist could in theory allow people to express themselves, but that privilege is just that, a privilege, not a right. They may only do so if the state approves it.

However the same can certainly be said for more capitalist nations such as the U.S. History proves that individually, many people were not free at all through much of our history. In fact, crossdressing was flat out illegal until just a few decades ago in our "free capitalist society".

And I don't mean you would just get refused service at a restaurant or store... no, if you got caught in public with a dress on, you were subject to being charged with an actual crime!

It continues to this day with regards to which set is allowed to walk around without a shirt on. The current state of law in many states is that a man can go without a shirt, but a woman can not. This is a clear violation of the 14th amendment, yet the laws stand...

And we're not communist.

As I listened to the translation of the old national anthem of former U.S.S.R., I found it ironic that they believed themselves to be "free" too.

Regardless of what "ism" you may live under, I pose the questions,

A) Do you believe you are free and if so....

B) What is the source of this freedom?

Are you free to express yourself because of certain inalienable rights? Or are these simply privileges that we are only enjoying temporarily?

I fear the latter is likely the case.

We have never truly been free. We are trying, but there is a strong authoritarian culture that is forever trying to hold us down.

All this aside, it also prompts another [fun] answer the the big question: "why are you wearing a skirt?"

"Because Americans/Brits/Australians are free and commies conform... you're not a commie are ya?... " :wink:

That oughta shut 'em up...
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Re: When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

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moonshadow wrote: Tue Aug 17, 2021 5:59 pm All this aside, it also prompts another [fun] answer the the big question: "why are you wearing a skirt?"

"Because Americans/Brits/Australians are free and commies conform... you're not a commie are ya?... " :wink:

That oughta shut 'em up...
LOL, if I could just learn to say that with a straight face. I suppose I could practice.
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Re: When I Stopped Shopping By Gender, I Fell In Love With Fashion Again

Post by Dust »

moonshadow wrote: Tue Aug 17, 2021 5:59 pm Regardless of what "ism" you may live under, I pose the questions,

A) Do you believe you are free and if so....

B) What is the source of this freedom?

Are you free to express yourself because of certain inalienable rights? Or are these simply privileges that we are only enjoying temporarily?

I fear the latter is likely the case.

We have never truly been free. We are trying, but there is a strong authoritarian culture that is forever trying to hold us down.
I believe some things are inalienable rights. Others are privileges. But even if something is a right, that right will be trampled on if we do nothing to stop that from happening.

I've heard it said with only slight variation while applied to a variety of rights/privileges we enjoy here in the US, that a right not exercised is a right soon lost. Unless people see something done, it soon won't be done, and people will just go along with outlawing it. This definitely applies to wearing what we want. So get out there and be seen in your skirts, gentlemen!
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